


A Growl, a Chuff, and a Purr

by Celyan



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Misunderstandings, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-13 17:31:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21189170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celyan/pseuds/Celyan
Summary: Bond sees a strange man in his Quartermaster’s office, and reacts accordingly. Or not.





	A Growl, a Chuff, and a Purr

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the MI6 Cafe’s 666 word challenge over at Tumblr. It’s not exactly spooky, but when the beginning came to me I just couldn’t resist writing it. 😆
> 
> Lots of thanks for the lovely Dart for betaing, general wordbuilding & cheerleading, and coming up with the title. 💚

_Now this_, Q thinks as the snow leopard growls in warning, _is getting ridiculous._

Q’s currently wedged between his desk and the powerful flank of the snow leopard facing off his new assistant. Automatically, his hands sink into the fur that feels as silky as his cats’, to try and hold the agent back. 

“007! Stand down!” he commands firmly. 

Bond fully ignores him, as is his wont. Q wonders why he ever expected otherwise. A moment of temporary madness, surely; or perhaps he ought to blame his fatigue? 

Q sighs deeply. Of course it had to happen when he’d already spent 48 hours at Six, dealing with 009’s mission gone awry. Now that he could finally hand over the reins to R and Thomas, a bored 007 loitering around his branch had gotten the wrong idea about Thomas and changed into his predator form in front of him. 

“Bond! Stop growling, you absolute walnut! Thomas is not an enemy, he’s my new assistant!” 

Bond turns his head to face Q and mews in disbelief, the accompanying look making his feelings more than clear. Thomas perhaps isn’t what the word ’assistant’ generally brings to mind; indeed, by his looks alone he could well be a field agent, but that’s not why Q picked him. What impressed Q was the man’s intelligence, not what Eve likes to call his “smoking hotness”.

“You can go, Thomas,” Q tells his assistant, who looks relieved as he escapes through the half-open door and carefully closes it afterwards. Q appreciates his thoughtfulness. 

Bond lets out a small hiss, and moves not a muscle even after the door clicks closed.

“007! Stop scaring my staff!” Q orders, annoyed. ”And do turn back into your human form, we obviously have things to discuss.”

Finally, the warm press of Bond’s muscled flank eases off. Q barely has time to appreciate his newfound personal space before Bond twists, and Q finds himself face to face with Bond, big paws snug against either hip. Bond makes a chuffing sound (which still hasn’t stopped surprising Q who is more used to his own house cats than the bigger ones Six chooses to employ — 006’s a tiger, and 001 a lioness) and noses along his cheek to his neck. 

Q sputters, not having expected that. “Bond!” 

Bond simply purrs. 

Q brings his hands to the snow leopard’s chest with the intention of trying to push him away, but quickly finds that he simply doesn’t have it in himself to push away an affectionate feline. 

Not even when that feline is one James Bond. 

(Or perhaps especially not then. But Q digresses.)

So Q spends the next fifteen minutes petting the purring Bond and giving the lecture he’d just earned essentially to a wall. 

In other words, nothing out of the ordinary. 

Eventually, though, Bond turns back into himself. He’s still pressed against Q, with Q’s hands lightly around his neck, but he doesn’t seem to mind one bit.

“You’re good with your hands, Quartermaster,” he purrs against that particular spot on Q’s neck again. “I’ll have to keep that in mind.” 

With those words, he finally pulls away and exits the office as silently as he had appeared, leaving Q wide-eyed and slightly out of breath.

*

Q gets used to having a snow leopard shadow his movements whenever 007 is back to London and bored. His assistant, however, doesn’t. Thomas gives Bond, in both his forms, a wide berth, which certainly isn’t helped by the way Bond growls and stares at him as both a feline and a man. No amount of lecturing from Q changes that. 

It takes another three months and a failed mission of Bond’s for Q to have a light bulb moment, and a small, Q-engineered ”accident” at the labs for Bond to finally confess his feelings, surprising absolutely no-one. 

Afterwards, Thomas starts to get a greeting, and once or twice even a smile. Even if it’s smug, Q considers that a personal victory.

**Author's Note:**

> The “you absolute walnut” part I read somewhere some time ago - most likely Tumblr - and have been wanting to use in a fic ever since. So credit where credit is due, whoever you may be who came up with such a lovely insult. (Plus, I really like walnuts.)


End file.
